Could the NBA’s approach to COVID-19 safety be built off of a faulty premise for play outside of a bubble environment?
That’s exactly the question raised by the Athletic’s Tim Cato and Jared Weiss, who note the surging case numbers around the league and the related necessity of placing players adjacent to them for too long or without masks into the league’s health and safety protocols for contact tracing. With a growing number of games either being played with a skeleton crew of players or being postponed when the number of available players dips below the NBA’s minimum number of eight players, the situation could spiral out of control if so.
In the last eight days, Durant entered quarantine a day after playing the Wizards; the 76ers had a positive test the day after playing them; the Celtics had a positive test the day after playing them; and the Heat lost half their roster the day after playing them. https://t.co/EZg8RaZNnS
— Fred Katz (@FredKatz) January 12, 2021
Using the example of the embrace of Celtics All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum and friend Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards after those two teams faced off last week as a league-identified high-risk situation, the pair of analysts highlighted that Beal was the only Wizard held out over the course of several subsequent games despite Tatum’s later positive test results.
Meanwhile, The Athletic’s Fred Katz pointed out on Twitter that Kevin Durant of the Brooklyn Nets had to quarantine after playing Washington, Boston had a positive test (Tatum) the day after a game, and the Miami Heat ended up losing half their roster the day after playing the Wiz.
Related or not, the optics are terrible and the risk of more than lost games real.
Celtics vs Bulls postponed after Boston drops below 8 players available https://t.co/vzzVa09faJ
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) January 11, 2021
Reviewing the league’s protocols with a pair of infectious disease experts, Cato and Weiss relate they believe the NBA may have neglected to consider the specific realities of an NBA game compared to CDC guidelines intended for more of a general use situation.
“Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and infectious disease physician, is concerned the league has applied them without consideration for the extraordinary circumstances of an actual NBA game,” they relate. “‘That guidance is probably not applicable in those situations … We know that when people are engaged in athletic activity they’re often breathing faster … [It’s] more likely for more viral droplets to emanate during high intensity exercise, especially in indoor environments where people are less than six feet apart.'”
And while not addressed by the pair of Athletic analysts, there is also a more contagious variant confirmed to be in several NBA markets that may also be an important, unconsidered factor.
WATCH: Could short-term mini-bubbles solve the NBA’s COVID-19 problem? https://t.co/9Nop90I5KA
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) January 12, 2021
Given at least some of the league’s biggest markets are also dealing with a critically overburdened healthcare infrastructure at this very moment, a short pause may be in order to re-assess the protocols and the situation more generally.
While financial exigencies must certainly be part of the league’s guiding logic, they walk a tightrope increasingly in view of public opinion and more importantly ethics also in need of consideration.
Creative and intelligent solutions may yet be found to move things forward — perhaps something like mini-bubbles of a shorter duration as one solution recently proposed — but at minimum, another pass with the best available experts seems to be in order.
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